Big Brother

Every year our ad breaks, roadside billboards and online websites are bombarded with graphics of disturbing eyes and ‘mysterious’ messages read by the dreary voice of Marcus Bentley, all in promotion of the abomination that is ‘Big Brother UK’. It’s all leading up to the ‘big’ opening night, previously hosted by the over excited Davina McCall, until it was mercifully cancelled by Channel Four.

Unfortunately, Channel Five then had the absolutely marvellous idea to bring it back. So last year another batch of orange faced, desperate, UmpaLumpa impersonators staggered their way onto our screens. Of course, the contestants are deliberately chosen to clash and cause havoc, mixing upper class daddy’s boys with Essex hairdressers with no GCSEs to their name. And so when they enter the big brother house, everyone seems all happy chums, making new friends, but it’s all an act and we get to see that further on in the show. They’re all evil, over ambitious wanna-be celebrities, that, frankly, are a chromosome, or two, short of normal. Often these contestants are abusive, racist and sexist, and aren’t afraid to show their controversial views to the millions of brainless viewers. Apparently one person’s view was a little too much and there was public uproar, shown in ‘highly respected’ magazines such as ‘OK’ and ‘Nuts’. According to Carphone Warehouse, trapping people in a house for a month for money is ok, but racism is where they draw their metaphorical line of inappropriate.

Sadly, it’s not all racist comments and living room brawls, most of the programme is simply just the contestants lounging around, doing nothing. It’s like watching obese sloths lounge around in overly bright and extravagant environment with no natural light, using way too many high angle camera shots. The producers use an awful lot of pan shots, too, it’s enough to make me dizzy. They also, often make the lens blacked around the sides, giving it that unique ‘stalker’ effect.

When they’re not lounging around, causing fights and having conveniently controversial relationships, the contestants are doing pointless and ridiculous tasks. Such tasks involve: obstacle courses, eating challenges, and my favourite; dares. Of course I don’t actually have a favourite task, not being a viewer myself, but these dares involve the contestants humiliating themselves (even more than before, which is quite an achievement, in itself) by doing weird and random acts towards fellow house mates.

There are two types of people who watch this programme: the ones who watch it purely out of cynicism, and the enthusiastically obsessed people. The latter, is the type who will get genuinely upset if their ‘favourite’ housemate gets evicted. It’s at these points in life, I fear for humanity. They are also the type who wastes their money voting every Saturday for their favourite housemate to stay in for another week, providing the viewer with nothing but seeing their favourite contestant’s face on TV every night until next Saturday. To be quite frank, I am embarrassed by these people, they are the type who watches Loose Women and Jeremy Kyle, in fact they’re probably the type appear Jeremy Kyle, then watch the episode they were on, on repeat and show it to their neighbours as if it’s a good thing, forever being seen as slightly famous amongst their small group of sad friends, who no doubt, watch big brother too. But who am I to judge?

Now, when this monstrosity finally comes to an end, the winner of big brother is expected to be seen on every TV host shows for the next few months, then they thankfully fade into the abyss and work as the ‘star guest’ in pantomimes for the rest of their miserable lives. But then again, the cycle repeats next year, a new batch of housemates will enter the ‘Big brother house’ and again, there’ll be a winner. And so, the cycle continues, making infinite pantomime guests, enough to rival minor characters from long forgotten soaps, occasionally getting replays on ITV 3 on a Sunday afternoon. Occasionally one will get lucky, and sign a lifetime contract of advertising cash4gold or online bingo. Please remind me, why do contestants enter, again?

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